More Fable

I’m getting lots of mail from people about my Fable post. I’d say it is split right down the middle between people who agree the game is a waste of time and people who really enjoy it. Someone mentioned in an email to me that Fable is the sort of game you either love or hate and I think that’s true.

Many of you who like the game have suggested that I had fallen victim to the hype surrounding Fable. People are trying to tell me that had I not been expecting the turkey dinner with all the trimmings we were promised, I’d be satisfied with the microwave burrito we all received.

Tycho can back me up on this, I don’t read hype anymore. I quit reading previews more than a year ago. I honest to God knew next to nothing about Fable until I saw it at PAX. I had heard from Tycho that you could make choices and become good or evil but that was all the information I had. I realized a long time ago that the hype machine was ruining video games for me. I wanted to go back to the days when I was actually surprised by a game. I made a decision to stop reading previews and I’ve stuck with it. Sometimes it frustrates the hell out of Tycho as he’ll want to discuss a game with me and I’ll have no fucking idea what he’s talking about. The end result of all this is that I played Fable with zero expectations about what sort of game it should be or what features it should have. I discovered after playing it that it was originally supposed to have an online component and things made a lot more sense. It seems to me like many of the mechanics in the game were designed for online play and when that was removed they just don’t seem to work as well.

I sat down and Played Fable and I felt like it was a proof of concept rather than a game. People seem to want to compare it to a Zelda style action RPG and I don’t think it even comes close. There is no sense of exploration in Fable. You spend the entire game running back and forth along the same narrow paths through the same tiny zones. I never felt the same sense of awe that I got from Zelda when I discovered a new island or explored a dungeon. None of that matters though. The fact is that some people are going to like Fable and some people aren’t. I certainly think you should rent it and try it for yourself. Mailing me and calling me a “cockmunch” isn’t going to change my opinion of the game and it just takes time away from you that you could spend farting or trying to have sex in Fable.